IT TAKES A COMMUNITY to raise a man. Thanks to my personal heroes who continue to shape a better world: Treena Chambers, Dana Baitz, Shauna Lancit Baitz, Amber Dawn, John Downes, lisa g, David Greenshields, Trish Kelly, Kim Kinakin, Francis Langevin, Patrick Martone, Billeh Nickerson, Lloyd Pritchard (Darlene the Ambassador’s Wife), Matt Rader, Gary Saulnier, Zena Sharman, Colin Thomas, and my excellently confabulated Radical Faerie community who meet twice a year at Breitenbush Hot Springs.
This book had great feedback from the wonderful likes of these wonderful people: Colin Thomas, Matt Rader, and Zena Sharman. Thank you for your timely wisdoms.
I want to thank my family—who grew into such excellent adults—for loving me so well. I hope you haven’t read this book, but if you have, my next wish is that you’ve found some kind of comfort in it, as I have in writing it.
Nobody could imagine a better best friend, brain-stormer, editor, and surrogate father than Colin Thomas. Thank you for helping raise me with your excellent breadth of manhood.
Thank you to the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, and Dean Wisdom Tettey, for their ongoing support. Much of this book was written during sabbatical. As our universities are being turned into machines for big business and profit, I call on our colleagues to speak up against the deterioration of inquiry, independent thought, and diversity. Special thanks to my colleagues in the very queer(-friendly) Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, most especially Neil Cadger, Connie Crompton, Nancy Holmes, and Denise Kenney, for their excellent support and friendship.
Some of this writing has been previously published in other forms. I’d like to thank the following publications, and their publishers and editors, for supporting this work: Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman (Arsenal Pulp Press); The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Essays on Queer Sexuality and Desire, edited by Greg Wharton (Boheme Press); and Xtra! West, which published Blush, a monthly column on my misadventures.
Twenty years ago I met Brian Lam briefly at a book fair in Toronto’s Convention Centre where he presented a small table of excellent queer books he’d published. I’ve wanted a book with Arsenal Pulp Press ever since. Thank you to Brian, Robert Ballantyne, Susan Safyan, Gerilee McBride, Cynara Geissler, and everyone at Arsenal Pulp Press for making that young fag’s dream come so wonderfully true.